Copied from Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak: A History of Weber County, 1824-1900, pg 279.

MOTHER ADDISON’S STAMPEDE

(By Celia Hall)

During the pioneer period Indians were usually friendly with the whites, and the latter in turn were generous with the red men, making a practice of giving them food whenever possible. Still the confidence existing between the two peoples could hardly be considered ideal. Children always ran for the house if they saw a band of Indians approaching; there was a general fear of red men in the minds of the settlers.

Even an Indian had a crude sense of humor, and, much as a cat enjoys playing with a mouse, natives enjoyed teasing frightened pale-faces. No one ever seemed to know just when those dusky fellows were tormenting or when they were preparing to scalp their victims. One time a big buck stretched himself across my mother’s only doorway, and kept her prisoner within the house for several hours, while he and his companion laughed and talked between themselves in a language she could not understand.

Near the mountain road which leads from Salt Lake City to Ogden, a row of farm houses are scattered along the way between Weber Canyon and Farmington. In the early settlement of that region, there were a number of families who made their homes in the eastern part of what is now Layton. The country was very rugged in those days, with deep ravines and thick brush. For convenience the settlers built their homes in the hollows. These secluded nooks also made a very suitable place for an Indian attack.

Among these hills lived a family by the name of Addison. It was summer. Mr. Addison and his wife were out in the field harvesting grain. He was not a large man and was older than his wife by several years. Mrs. Addison was a tall, dark, angular woman, wiry and strong. She stood up in the wagon, drove the team, and loaded the bundles while her husband pitched them in. It was a peaceful day, warm and still. From her elevation on the wagon, she had a partial view of the neighboring farm where the Morton’s lived. All at once there seemed to be motion in the vicinity of the Morton home. As she shaded her eyes to look, she could distinguish figures dodging about in the oak brush.

“Indians. They are fighting. The savages are killing the Mortons!” These thoughts flashed through her mind.

Seized with a sudden panic of fear, she lashed the old work horse into a gallop and soon left the field behind, and, incidentally, her husband, standing with open mouth and with a bundle of grain perched on the tines of his pitchfork. Upon reaching her house, she hurried her astonished children into the wagon, and like Paul Revere, was off on a famous ride to warn the settlers.

Rattling and bouncing over the rough country road, the children had all they could do to cling on the sides of the wagon and keep from being thrown out, while the bundles of grain flew in every direction. Mother Addison stood her ground like a chariot racer, wielding the whip and urging her horses onward. Just above Kaysville, there was a row of farms adjoining each other. At each house she halted just long enough to shout the warning:

“Run for your lives. The Indians are killing everybody up at Morton’s. They’ll follow right down this road and kill you all.”

Then, with a crack of her whip, away she went to warn the next neighbor. Just where she ended her mad ride, I never heard. But she got the men all started up the road, armed with their old flint-lock guns, prepared to do battle with the redskins. Upon arriving at the Morton home, they found the family all alive and well, and a group of grinning Indians thoroughly enjoying the joke.

For many years thereafter all the neighbors continued to laugh about “Mother Addison’s Stampede,” and how she left her little old man alone in the field at the mercy of the Indians.